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Something lost on second-half-of-millenial-generation and up will be just how inaccessible media was, even well into the 90s. Movies took years to be released o

• Nav_Panel 9y ago
  > Sometimes it feels like we're drowning in media, and I'm not sure the trade-off of being able to watch Hogan's Heroes or whatever at a moment's notice rather than waiting for a rerun is entirely worth centering our lives on screens and speakers so completely. Yeah, this is part of the driving force behind the resurgence of vinyl, cassettes, VHS, etc. Scarcity and physical presence are great ways to imbue a sense of meaning into media. This is something I have difficulty expressing to my older colleagues (I'm in my early 20s, many I work with are in their 40s or older). "We" millennials no longer see a vinyl record as a means to the end of producing audio, the medium itself supposes to provide intrinsic value: the idea of "fidelity" has disappeared (remember "Hi-Fi"?) and has instead been replaced with some idea of "maximizing the experience" of engaging with the media. The concept of "fidelity," is, in a sense, nonsensical in the world of fully electronic music (in the realm of movies, most audiences already have some sense that movies are inauthentic/there is no comparable "live" experience, so perhaps this discussion does not extend into that domain. That said, old VHS tapes are a fun source of obscure video footage, and digital video can still be somewhat hard to track down!). The word "fidelity" itself means (in my own words) "qualitative closeness of a reproduction to some original source" and what is the "source" for something produced completely in a studio, often without any acoustic instruments present whatsoever? In the world of DJs and FL Studio or Ableton, many instead deal with some idea of "emotional fidelity" rather than "acoustic fidelity": how closely and intensely can we personally experience the (intended?) aesthetic/artistic qualities of a work? It is a meaningfully different experience to listening to one of my favorite disco records on vinyl (a record that, for all I know, buying secondhand in NYC, may have been played at the Paradise Garage) vs on YouTube. This reminds me of the idea of "Hyperreality" in Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" -- music with its own internal aesthetic and emotional world, its own language, its own norms. Almost no relationship to some sort of physical reality (guitars, drums, etc) other than the fact that we must experience sound via acoustic waves. > We've gained a lot, but more than a little's been lost True. After a while you wonder what's the point of all these intense emotional experiences, does it really satisfy any of our needs as human beings? Does it bring us any closer together? Just because something feels more meaningful, does that actually make it more meaningful? There will be some interesting reflections on this period of digital abundance in about 20 years.
• crazybigdan 9y ago
  I think this is right on. I listen to quite a bit of music and I have said several times to friends something like "I could spend the rest of my life listening to music released before 2000". Hyperbole, perhaps to some, but that is pretty accurate. I am now able to go and "discover" bands from the 70s. Film is another form of media that behaves in a similar manner. Why would I need to watch the new remake of movie X when the original is so readily available, and likely better. I think the internet has worked to make media and culture diffuse much faster. Something new and interesting is suddenly everywhere and certain kinds of surprises, or hype or suspense similar to say, the Beatles landing in the US in the 60s, would be extraordinarily hard to replicate. I would though, take a less dour attitude in regards to the future than you seem to have hinted at. I think society is adjusting to the this bombardment of entertainment, a more more people live fulfilling lives mostly detached from social media, you just won't find them on facebook :-).